Scotland's forgotten 2026 World Cup 'qualifier': Emojis, beer, hostility, visa issues and 12-hour border wait

No, not Scotland 4 Denmark 2 at Hampden on 18 November. But Copenhagen, three days earlier: Denmark 2 Belarus 2. Meanwhile, over 1500 miles away in Piraeus, on the outskirts of Athens, Scotland had come unstuck against the hosts only to be reprieved by Belarus. Despite losing their ‘home’ meeting against the Danes 6-0 in Hungary just six weeks earlier, the Belarusians claimed one of the most unlikely results in recent international football history. Scotland would go to the ball if they beat Denmark at home, which was still a very big if.

Fortunately, all’s well that ends well. But forget Scott McTominay, Kenny McLean et al. Without the contribution of Valery Gromyko and Nikita Demchenko, Scotland might well be preparing for another bleak summer spent on the outside looking in.

When my sports editor suggested a series of pre-World Cup articles, one of the first I proposed was something on the scorers of the most important goals en route. McTominay? Kieran Tierney? He was on board with this.

No, messrs Gromyko and Demchenko, I told him. If these players’ names are not yet seared into Scottish psyche, then they ought to be. Gromyko’s name might have rung some bells even before his labours on Scotland’s behalf in Copenhagen. Not only did he play in both qualifying games v Scotland, he was also at the centre of a brief controversy when it emerged he had been booked three times in Champions League qualifying before facing Celtic for Kairat Almaty, his previous club, in August. The assumption that he should have been suspended for the 0-0 draw at Parkhead was erroneous – yellow cards reset after two qualification rounds. The midfielder was also free to play in the second leg, which Kairat won on penalties.

The Tartan Army were certainly happy that he played at the Parken although it hadn’t seemed terribly significant either way when Mikkel Damsgaard gave Denmark the lead after 11 minutes. Scotland, meanwhile, were already 1-0 down against Greece, which became 2-0 soon after the start of the second half. Another goal followed: 3-0. Bloody typical Scotland. But wait a sec, goal flash from Denmark.

Somehow, Gromyko had managed to wriggle free in a crowded box before planting a shot beyond Kasper Schmeichel into the corner. It was early, just 62 minutes in, but if Belarus could only hang on, it didn’t matter what happened in Greece, where Scotland had got a goal back at least - 3-1. And then another news flash really set the cat among the pigeons: Belarus had scored again. Two goals in three minutes having scored twice all campaign to date.

Nikita Demchenko, a young player now playing in the Portuguese second tier with Vizela, slid in to put his side ahead following a curling low cross into his path from Gromyko, who was emerging as Scotland’s saviour. Gromyko collapsed to the turf in celebration when he saw the ball hit the net. Although Denmark equalised after 79 minutes, Belarus survived the remaining 11 minutes and then a further seven minutes of added time. Back in the away dressing room, phones were already beginning to ping with notifications.

‘Maybe one day I will pick a bar’

“There were a few (from Scots),” says Gromyko, when contacted by The Scotsman. “Lots of emojis with Belarusian flags, a lot of ‘thank yous’ and some even wrote ‘we are one family now’ … I understand that of course Scotland still had to win its home game vs Denmark, but in a way our result gave them this chance. Some Scottish fans texted that if I come to Scotland they will buy me a beer. Who knows? Maybe if I come one day, I will pick a bar, go there and remind everyone about the goal!”

“I want to visit Celtic Park again when they will play in the UEFA Champions League,” he adds. “I want to feel this great atmosphere again, even as a spectator. Last year I played there as a player. It was an absolutely fascinating atmosphere. I also promised my wife that I will take her there. A lot of football players also said that the football atmosphere at Celtic Park is outstanding. The stadium is definitely worth going back to for another visit.”

The atmosphere was notably hot in Copenhagen as well. Denmark’s culture minister Jakob Engel Schmidt urged fans to bring along Ukraine flags to the game in protest at Belarus continuing to facilitate Russia’s invasion of their neighbour. It helped whip up a partisan, slightly toxic atmosphere.

“I felt proud for my country and for our team especially after the incident that happened during our national anthem, when the stadium whistled,” says Gromyko. “This was very unpleasant. I was happy and proud to score and the goal itself turned out to be quite good.”

Gromyko has since signed for Maxline Vitebsk, current leaders of the Belarussian Premier League. He scored in a 2-1 win at BATE on Sunday. He is happy to know he is a hero elsewhere as well.

It is of course stretching things to claim Belarus 'did it for Scotland’. Indeed, at the start of the campaign, Scotland were the country they might have been least well-disposed to due to the obstacles put in place – by the British Government to be fair – when it came to obtaining visas for Belarus players.

“I remember two things which probably helped us get the result (in Copenhagen),” says Aleksandr Aleinik, head of communications at the Belarus Football Federation. “The first thing was that the last game against Denmark was 0-6, which was a bad defeat for us, not the record, but a bad game. If you talk about FIFA rankings, then they (Denmark) are very much favourites, but still 0-6 is too much.” Pride was at stake, he stresses. Secondly, there was what he describes as “the politics around this game in Denmark”. He adds: “When our anthem played, the whole stadium whistled. It provoked the players to prove them wrong. We did not face anything like that night in Scotland or Northern Ireland (in the Nations League). We played in Belfast and Glasgow and did not get that attitude from the people. They supported the home team but in a respectful manner.”

Geopolitics were more than just a backdrop to the match in Denmark. They were front and centre. The Belarus party was forced to make a 25-hour marathon journey just to get to Copenhagen. On the eve of the game they were sitting in a row of lorries and buses on the Polish border. “We cannot fly from Minsk now so usually we fly from Lithuania,” explains Aleinik. “But at that point Lithuania closed the border because of political reasons. We had to move our charter flight from the capital of Lithuania to the capital of Poland and take a bus to Poland. But only one border point was open. Even though we sent several letters to try and speed it up, we spent over 12 hours at the border. And that was after eight hours travelling on a bus.”

Even without knowledge of this, nobody expected what happened to happen the following evening. Newspaper previews put it in black and white. Few reporters bothered to include caveats. Scotland had to avoid defeat in Greece to take automatic World Cup qualifying to the last game. Belarus getting something in Denmark was not even considered a possibility.

When reports filtered through to the Scottish dugout in Piraeus of a Belarus goal and, shortly afterwards, another one, Steve Clarke’s thoughts might have drifted momentarily to a night when he had a part to play in a Scotland strike that changed the course of another country’s football history.

Gary Mackay gets the plaudits – and the free pints of Guinness – whenever he is in Ireland and rightly so. However, it’s perhaps forgotten who played the ball through to the young Hearts midfielder for him to score the momentous goal for Scotland against Bulgaria in 1987 that sent Jack Charlton’s Republic of Ireland team to European Championships in Germany the following summer.

It was the third of Clarke’s six caps. The current Scotland manager accepted referee Helmut Kohl’s invitation to play on after Gordon Durie was scythed down by an unlikely assassin in Hristo Stoichkov near the touchline. Clarke fed Mackay, who had replaced Paul McStay at half time for his international debut, and the young Hearts midfielder slotted home with three minutes left.

The rest is Irish history. They never looked back, qualifying for three of the next four major finals, including two World Cups.

Charlton reportedly sent a crate of champagne to the SFA, which the famously scrupulous Ernie Walker, then president of the SFA, promptly returned.

Nevertheless, Mackay is still celebrated in Ireland to this day. RTE, the national broadcaster, named him one of their sportsmen of the year. One wonders whether Scots will afford Demchenko and Gromyko the same level of adulation. And what about the laconic Belarus manager Carlos Alos, who masterminded the against-all-odds draw in the hostile Parken Stadium? Belarus’ contribution to Scotland’s return to a World Cup cannot be downplayed.

The so-called pariah state who helped us

There should be at least some acknowledgment of the role the so-called pariah state of Europe played in the story. Without Belarus, that glory night against the Danes at Hampden would have been a dead rubber to all intents and purposes. A spirit-crushing obligation in which the only suspense would have involved avoiding bookings and injuries ahead of play-off commitments in the Spring, when – and let’s not pretend otherwise – Scotland would have been up against it.

Hopes were high that Wales would prevail, but they fell to Bosnia and Herzegovina in a shootout. Republic of Ireland were 2-0 up in their semi-final play-off against Czech Republic and still lost. And then there's Denmark, who were minutes away from North America before a defender miskicked on the edge of his own box, giving Tierney a glimmer of an opportunity. They dealt with North Macedonia efficiently enough before shootout anguish against the Czechs.

It's Scottish players in the sticker books, Scotland are on the wallcharts. Where are Denmark? On the beach, with little prospect of a reprieve this time. Where are Greece, whose 3-2 win over Scotland had looked to have stymied the automatic qualification hopes for Clarke’s side? Well fancied, they didn't even reach the play-offs.

And what about Belarus and their now ex manager Alos? His reward for holding Denmark in their own backyard and then drawing 0-0 with Greece a few days later was getting his jotters from the Belarus Football Federation, who have since hired Viktor Goncharenko.

A change of president at the federation did not help. However, thrashings by Greece and Denmark in the opening three games ultimately proved fatal. Alos is now the manager of third tier Juventud Torremolinos in his Spanish homeland. He has signed a short-term contract until the end of the season to replace former Raith Rovers, Airdrie and Kilmarnock player Antonio Calderon. Crowds hover around the 1,500 mark. This is still more than were present in Zalaegerszeg, the quiet Hungarian town that became Belarus’ home from home for international fixtures played behind closed doors.

Nearly 50,000 watched Scotland play Belarus in Glasgow in October. The occasion clearly meant a lot to Alos, whose side ran Scotland so close in a 2-1 defeat. His WhatsApp profile picture is one of him from that night, with Hampden a very recognisable backdrop.

He had just been appointed at Juventud when The Scotsman caught up with him. Although his new team are in the heat of a relegation battle—they have lost both of his opening games in charge – Alos was happy to discuss a certain night in Copenhagen. While it might have saved Scotland’s bacon, it could not save his own. “It is OK,” he says. “It is life.”

Regarding his penultimate game in charge of Belarus, when his side held a team ranked over 70 places above them, he says: “We wanted to respect the competition. We had nothing riding on the game, we had no chance of qualifying. But we knew that the qualification of two teams was involved in the game. We had to be as professional as we can and be faithful to the competition.

“Of course I was disappointed how Scotland - not the national team, but the country - did not accept some visas for our players. We had big problems with that. I could not choose some players.

“Sometimes you do wonder if we had to do (what we did) after what they did for us. OK, we are professionals. And now I am happy. I love British football. I love the respect we got in general. We do our job in the best way and in that moment we helped Scotland too. It has gone down in history.”

Indeed it has. Has he received anything from the Scottish Football Association, perhaps a bottle of whisky at least, in recognition of the part he played? “No. Maybe they send something to the federation. I am no longer part of the federation. But personally to me? No.” There are no hard feelings, however. “Good luck,” says Alos. “I am for Spain. But good luck this summer.”